What's your job about?
I am fortunate enough to be working as a commercial analyst in bp’s new energy team in Australia. Whilst my job title is fairly broad, my role primarily entails economic modelling and strategy for projects across the new (and existing) energy vectors that bp is looking to participate in. Throughout my graduate program, I developed a love for working with data and analytics and I feel that my role allows me to flex this acumen but also be involved in really interesting projects. When I speak to people, I often say the role is a lot of excel spreadsheets, which is something that would have certainly scared me back in my university days. But once I got through the teething challenges of navigating the various formulas and functionality of excel, I realised it’s my biggest asset!
What's your background?
I grew up in Melbourne, Australia and have lived here all my life. I would say I am one of the rare ones as I went to Leibler Yavneh College from kindergarten all the way through to the end of year 12, but I am very grateful for the opportunity to have spent 14 amazing years at such a great school. As I navigated my way through University, I worked in hospitality and was fortunate to travel in almost all holiday periods! A personal highlight was spending 3 months working and living in Whistler (Canada) with two of my best friends, skiing almost every single day.
When I reflect on my journey to where I am today, I am grateful for taking advantage of all the opportunities to travel and experience different parts of the world that I had in front of me. It has definitely allowed me to see the world differently and I feel has been really beneficial to growing as an individual.
What advice would you give to someone who is interested in a similar role?
I believe that anyone could do my job if they were willing to come with the right attitude and curiosity to learn about new things. When I think about where I was 3 years ago, my first day at bp, I didn’t think I would ever be able to have the level of knowledge and expertise in particular programs that I am now so familiar with. It always comes down to attitude!
What's the coolest thing about your job?
The coolest part about my job is the people that I work with. Generally, I feel very blessed to work with incredibly intelligent individuals who show a great deal of care for their work and the people that they work with. I genuinely believe I work in the most interesting industry in the entire world and coupled with a great working culture, every day is very interesting and quite frankly, very different!
What are the limitations of your job?
I think as covid happened people realised how easy it was to work from home and perhaps the incentive to spend time in the office become a little lesser than pre-covid. This has obviously had its benefits, but I feel for young and less experienced team members, it is a little bit of a missed opportunity to overhear or sit in on impromptu conversations that are now exclusively on Microsoft teams. I can already see how as we come back to the office more frequently, these conversations I get to overhear are when I learn the most.
3 pieces of advice for yourself when you were a student...